As my life changes, it gives me new things to write about.
— Jason Isbell
The world changes fast, and a lot of the old country folks have a hard time keeping up with it, and it makes them sad.
For any writer, a red pen is such a trigger.
For me, the things like the Confederate flag - I just don't think that it does anybody much good, and it certainly causes a lot of people a lot of pain.
What having a child - and especially a daughter - has done is lifted more of the veil for me: allowed me to see things on another level compared to how I used to see them.
I've spent a lot of time in a rock n' roll band trying to fight off the fact that I was old enough to rent a car. And it's all sort of rushed in at once now. And I like it.
I've tried to be open to what's going on and paying close attention, not letting things that inspire me to pass me by.
I think probably songwriters are gonna be the toughest critics... I think of it as a community. And we all sort of feed off of each other.
I just try to keep making good records, try to write songs the best way I can and take my job seriously. Like most people take their jobs.
Songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day' and 'Dress Blues,' those were good songs, but the output wasn't as consistent in those days.
I find the ones that have the most emotional weight, the heaviest songs. For some reason, for me, they're usually the ones I write the quickest. I put more work into uplifting material, I think, sometimes.
My wife may be the role model for our daughter in some ways, but I think I represent what she'll put up with. You know, I think one day she'll say, 'OK my dad behaved this way, so if whoever I happen to fall in love with behaves this way it's got to be OK because I love my dad.'
When I wrote those first songs for the Truckers, songs like 'Outfit' and 'Decoration Day,' those were strong songs, very strong songs. But had I been in the position of writing an entire album at that point in time, I don't think the whole album would have been of that kind of quality.
I think I affiliate with somebody like Ben Howard. He's quite a bit younger than I am, but I think what he's doing is in a very similar tradition.
I try to make statements that aren't broad because that doesn't make for good writing. I don't get commentary as my job, because I'm not very good at that. The way I do it is by writing songs, and I have to be small; I have to make the stories a bit personal.
My wife and I both grew up with parents who were very young. Her mom was, I think, 17 or 18 when she was born; my mom was 15 when I was born. So, as we got older, we started thinking a lot about that - about the time that those people missed because we came along when we did and because they devoted so much of their lives to taking care of us.
Rehab is like a divorce.
The Police could get away with doing an entire record with really no audible reverb, which I have always admired and thought would be a lot of fun to try to re-create.
Right when I started touring, there was this wariness I had of the world outside of my small town. But I'm not that person anymore, and I was never completely that person.
I have a lot of reactions to the outside world that I don't feel like would be appropriate for songs: things I'm not interested in writing about, things I don't want to think about any longer than 15 or 20 seconds.
If you're going to document your own journey, the jokes work better in the first person, just like the stories do.
If you're the person whose problems were solved when you were born, your job is to try and help the people who aren't in that situation. It's very easy to say you're tired of political discussion when all of your problems are solved. I keep trying to think of it that way.
At some point, I'd like to make a record that's more of a self-serving guitar album, because I really love to play. It's not really something I'd expect a whole lot of people to buy, though.
I don't write a whole lot about one person that exists in reality; it's usually characteristics of different people that I combine into a character. I tend to think through and try and make characters behave in a natural way. I follow the character and think about what they would do, what decisions they would make.
If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.
A great story poorly told doesn't do anybody any good at all, and nobody wants to hear it, and nobody wants to read it. The craft of it is really more important than the subject matter.
If I could write rock & roll songs on purpose, I'd do it all the time. But most of what I write comes out slow and sad because that's most of what I listen to.
I try to read a lot and listen to a lot of good songwriters, and I try to actually work on the craft of writing a song rather than just leaving it up to inspiration.
I feel like people have a lot of the same good times and the same interests pretty much anywhere.
There are definitely some nights where the show is over, and you're on the bus or a hotel room, and it's sort of a shock to go from being in the atmosphere of a club or a theater and be at your own show to being by yourself in a hotel room.
Early on, I had to structure my ideas of success around things like, 'Can I go back and listen to the record months or years after I made it and still get some enjoyment out of it?' Or 'Have I said what I wanted to say on this album? Did it connect with people on a personal level, even if it's a small number of people?'
I think politics are a very personal thing.
No matter what you thought your plans were, that's not how things are going to work out, and that's the only way you can really, I think, live successfully.
Physical labor, manual labor - if you can stay close to those folks, there's always plenty to write about, 'cause their issues are real issues.
I don't think I'm a country artist, really. I'm a country person, but I don't think I'm necessarily a country singer or musician.
You always have a lot of time on the road, and you have to fill that time up with something.
I've always known that there are conflicting issues going on where I'm from. It's always been that way.
You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.
When I was playing with the Truckers, a lot of really good things happened. And we had a good trajectory for a long time. For that kind of a band, for the kind of music that I've always made, we had a lot of success, I think.
I always think that's neat, when you can hear a story told from different points of view, different perspectives.
When I hear somebody like Hayes Carll write a song that's touching and poignant and sad and funny all at the same time, it motivates me to step my game up and try to figure out a way to get more different emotions into one line or one song.
I have my own definitions of success. And I have my own definitions of country music that, luckily, I share with more people than I realized before.
I don't start a song with an idea of what ingredients are going to go into a song. It's not like a recipe. I will normally either talk from personal experience or I'll make a character and then try to allow that character to behave the way he or she naturally would.
A lot of people make records where there are a couple songs worth listening to and you skip through the rest, and I don't want to do that because those records bore me pretty bad.
Whatever needed to be done, I need to know how to do it just as well as my wife. You know, for us to be able to really balance the parenting. It was very humbling, and it was also, um - terrifying. Because, you know, giving a baby a bath for the first time is one of the scariest things you can do on this whole earth.
Something that really helps when it comes to writing songs is you start to notice how children learn and how we all had to learn in the first place, starting from the ground up. It gives you a new perspective.
I feel like for me to write songs that I would be interested in as a listener, there has to be tension, and there has to be some kind of push and pull between reality and the potential of disaster.
It's nice to feel like you have more in common with people rather than more differences.
Most of the people that I spend my time around are people who listen to a whole lot of different kinds of music.
A lot of people in Nashville think that the best song is the catchiest or the one that sells the most copies. They're editing songs in a way that make them seem more consumable, I guess. I'm trying to edit them in a way that makes them more honest.
